


Apparition

by Violsva



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, When I Entered Those Tags They Were Properly Capitalized, early days at SHIELD, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 10:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15993116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: The first confirmed sighting of the Winter Soldier.





	Apparition

“Director Carter?”

“Yes?” Peggy looked up. It was Daniel, being unusually formal for the sake of anyone overhearing. He closed the door behind himself and placed a folder on her desk.

“Parris’ report on Leningrad,” he said. “Third page.”

Peggy skimmed the first two, then read the third closely, and frowned. She flipped through the rest, hoping for more details, which were utterly lacking. “An assassin with a prosthetic arm?” she asked, when it was clear that that was all the report could tell her.

“Not like any prosthetic I’ve heard of,” said Daniel. “And if the Soviets have technology like that they’re decades ahead of us at least.”

Peggy went back to the pages in front of her. “This is a terrible report,” she said. “I hope you brought that up with Parris?”

“He’s not getting promoted anytime soon,” Daniel agreed. “But the man he saw—”

“Yes,” said Peggy. “And it can’t be Soviet technology, unless he’s gone rogue since—he’s clearly acting against their aims. And they wouldn’t have let him walk out with tech like that.”

“Oh,” said Daniel, tilting his head as he reconsidered Parris’ report. “Yeah, he must be.”

“Parris should have spotted that.”

“Not everyone can be you, Peggy. But he must have gotten the robotic arm somewhere. You think it’s a third party?”

Peggy hissed a breath through her teeth. The third party was a hypothesis, nothing more, and just as easily explained by random chance. Still, it was tempting, very tempting, to believe that some of the pervasive international tension was caused by deliberate action, by some group that wanted to use that tension for their own ends. So tempting that every piece of evidence for it should be intensely scrutinized, and taken with a pile of salt.

“Talk to Research,” said Peggy. “See if they have anything from Hydra or Leviathan or anywhere else that would explain the arm Parris describes. And get someone to train him to write a decent report. His observation skills are better than average, but this is useless.”

“Sure thing.”

“I’ll call Stark. Oh, damn, and I suppose you’d better get one of the junior agents to interrogate that Nazi toad about it, not that he’s likely to tell us anything useful.”

He didn’t. No one else had any evidence that anyone had or could advance that far in robotics. Peggy debriefed Parris again herself, without results. The report was filed away.

When Sousa went looking for it on a hunch ten years later, he couldn’t find it.


End file.
